


Practicality

by bookhobbit



Category: Discworld - Terry Pratchett
Genre: Hogswatch, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-08
Updated: 2014-01-08
Packaged: 2018-01-07 23:37:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 435
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1125726
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bookhobbit/pseuds/bookhobbit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Spending Hogswatch in Rincewind's study was an entirely logical decision. Now with a small illustration.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Practicality

**Author's Note:**

> A tiny silly snippet made around Christmas when I asked people to send me things. I'm only just now getting around to uploading them, whoops. It's going on the Trouser Legs series because it would seem to fit that universe reasonably well. Also because I went to the bother of making a series of it and everything else I've written since has been AUs. Most vexing.
> 
> ETA: I happened to make dorky art based on this and I decided to dump it here, because why not.

Ponder had been planning to work straight through the holidays. He had enough to do: HEX was misbehaving again (something about the Hogfather and a teddy bear) and his students had come up with some rather good new ideas for simplification of vermin-removing spells which, when properly tested, might allow them to be done with only a piece of string, some wire, and a sacrificial flea.

But.

It was cold.

Stepping into the HEM building, one barely felt a difference from the outside, except that there was slightly less wind if you kept the door firmly shut. And it was very difficult to program HEX when your fingers were numb and stiff.

The university itself was a bit better, but not by much; Ponder had woken up this morning to something that surely could not have been frost on his blankets, but which looked an awful lot like it.

Consequently, he was in Rincewind’s room. 

This was, he told himself, a perfectly logical and rational decision. Rincewind had far more coal than he could possibly use, what with the seventeen titles and the stubborn coal-porter. It was actually warm there, so Ponder brought his notebooks and wrote to himself about what needed to be done on HEX and how to improve the vermin-removing spells. More productive than huddling under his covers and catching a cold.

He absolutely did not spend the time snuggled up to Rincewind, who mostly spent his days peacefully cataloging rocks, absentmindedly learning new languages in case he had to scream in them, or reading geography books and thanking his stars that he wasn’t in whatever distant, mysterious lands the books were talking about. Not much time, anyway. And when he did it was for heat and nothing else. 

Of course, he still had to deal with his students making bets on when Ponder would ‘admit it’ (Ponder had no intention of admitting anything; his personal business was personal and not to be bet upon, he kept telling them), but it was worth it not to be freezing cold for a change.

Besides which, it was Hogswatch. It was…nice to be spending it in companionable silence, in front of a roaring fire, with someone who understood being frustrated with the universe, someone you were somewhat fond of. Better than rushing around trying to keep the senior wizard from interfering or waking up at your desk with banana-and-sushi pizza stuck to your cheek and a crick in the neck that prevented you from turning your head more than two degrees.

But it was an entirely practical decision. No sentiment at all.

Definitely.


End file.
